Windows being slow
 

For some reason last night Windows start being very slow. I was in the middle of playing one of the games I play frequently, World of Warcraft, when I noticed a big drop in the frames per second. It dropped to almost unplayable because of how slow it had become.

After running antivirus and spyware detection...I rebooted and upon doing this noticed slower times on certain actions. Everything seems to be working with the exception of pages that involve flash type players and WoW. When I go to my start button, it springs up right away but whenever I hover over anything...it takes longer then usual to load.

I thought maybe this was an issue with my video card, but I dont know much about it so I have no idea. Can anyone steer me in the direction on how to fix this or what may be wrong?

When you notice that the computer is slowing down, dpen the Task Manager by hitting "CTRL + ALT + DEL" and see what percentage the CPU usage is at. If it's approaching 100% then this is no real mystery at all. You can just check the list to see what is causing this.

Once you know, you can either disable the offending software, or look for a solution. There's no way to move forwards without knowing that information though. If your CPU usage remains low during the slowdown, that would indicate perhaps a lack of memory, or maybe a hardware problem.

Well it seems when I open task manager during processes that I tried, they all jump up to the high 80-90's depending on what I do. Firefox right now is taking 2-10 but when I go to say Youtube it jumps up to 90. Its never done this before and has always run smoothly without any problem. So do you think its a memory problem? I thought it was something to due with my video card, but I guess memory would make sense.

Yeah running a few websites, it seems to be anything I go to makes it jump high and it loads them extremely slow. Gr...I wonder why this happened all of the sudden. Is there any kind of test I can run to try to pinpoint the exact problem?

You could try a scandisk and defrag on your hard drive, wouldn't hurt.

I ran defrag and scandisk, didnt come up with anything.

About one of the posters above, I did try some investigating and when I go to the sites or load the games that slow me down, they are the ones that are taking up % of the process being used. For instance, again right now Firefox is at 17% when looking at Gamingforce. However if I go to a site like Youtube, it shoots up to 95%. Same thing with WorldofWarcraft and any other game I happen to load.

My first guess was the video card, but I think if I had an issue with that ...I wouldnt be able to load any of my games at all. Im leaning towards a memory problem although again since I dont know much about this, I could be wrong.

My question is, is it unheard of for things like this to happen? I mean in the middle of playing it just dropped like that and it hasnt gone back to what I used to be able to get. Checking around in properties though, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary.

This is insanely frustrating. I dont want to go out and spend money on something unless I know for sure that will fix the problem.

You could check your memory with the Ultimate Boot CD. Check your memory, hardware, video card (I think there is an option there), etc and see if it locates any problems.

It might be that when your computer crashed, the programs got screwy and so they are causing memory problems. It happens. Best thing(s) to do might be to reinstall the program and if that doesn't work, reinstall Windows.

Another possibility is overheating. You might checking vents, cleaning out dust on your video card or cpu, etc.

Could dust or overheating really cause slowdowns like that? It HAS been a while since I cleaned out the dust inside there, and a while back I was getting an error about my CPU fan not being detected...even though it was working..the errors eventually stopped.

I had an experience where dust clogged the cpu fan and caused problems, cleaned it out and the problems went away. so if a fan isn't working correctly or a component gets too hot, yes can cause slowdowns.

Well thank you all for your help, I never could figure out the problem but I figure it has something to do with a problem in my memory, seeing as the stuff that slows down for me shoots my processes up to 100%. I tried everything that I could, but to avail. I guess I will just buy a new system since I dont really feel like upgrading this one anymore.

Hold. Before you buy a new system, why not reinstall Windows? If it's still there after that then there is something really weird, hardware wise, going on. I mean, if you're going to get a new computer anyways, why not just reinstall?

Would of done that from the getgo had I the chance. I seem to be missing my windows CD and I cant even remember the last time I had it. Even tried a system restore, that didnt seem to do anything at all.

It really bugs me because a) I dont want to buy a whole new system and b) it will annoy me that I couldnt figure this out. It really is hard to tell what it is going on because every diagnostic test I run shows everything in working order, but its obviously not.

If you have your product key, you can just reinstall Windows by borrowing a CD from a friend.

It may be some program(s) in there are just messed up and causing the problem. A clean wipe should hopefully get rid of them.

Well I will try that maybe, hopefully I can find my product key...as it was on the cd case to the cd i cant find


Ok in case anyone happens to pass by and feels they can help...Ill give this information.

Right now just writing in here my CPU Usage varies from 4% to 11%. As soon as I load anything, ANYTHING as in another program, web browser etc...it jumps up to 100% usage. Usually it goes back down, depending on what it is. Moving to Youtube.com pushes it at 100% or close to it. If I let it sit for a while, it drops down to 60%. When I load a video, it stays at 100% and plays really choppy.

Here is some other information from my task mamager.
Right Now:
Totals:
Handles 6210
Threads 309
Processes 25

Commit Charge (K)
286056
Limit
1278928
Peak
291364

Physical Memory
Total 522736
Available 169916
System Cache 249800

Kernal Memory
31876
Paged 23220
Nonpaged 8656

Now when on youtube on a video page or when using a game (WoW, Warcraft 3, Halo)

CPU Usage 100%
PF Usage 456mb

Totals
Handles 8648
Threads 332
Processes 26

Commit Charge
Total 472480
Limit 1278928
Peak 492432

Physical Memory
total
522736
Available
147034
Cache
99208

Kernal

total
35092
Paged
26260
Nonpaged 8823



Also here are the processes that are taking up memory it seems

WoW.exe 83
taskmgr.exe 06
explorer.exe 05
System 06
System Idle Process 09

I'm not sure if you mentioned it before, but have you tried updating your drivers for your video card, sound card, etc.

Ill try updating drivers, anyone have a good program that will make that process easier? I would look myself, but since my computer is fucking retarded...its not letting me do searches on google or any other site. I tried driver detective..but that too is a piece of fucking shit.

Additional Spam:
Ok so I tried updating my drivers, that was obviously a lost fucking cause. As noted in my previous thread, I cannot google search things and im stuck either going directly to sites, half of which dont fucking work, or clicking "Im feeling lucky"...and so far all of the driver assiting programs have been absolutely fucking useless and frankly after 3 days of this shit...its pissing me off to the point where i want to put a bullet through my computer tower. So if anyone please could give me a program that could assist me with updating my drivers..or a website that would be best suited, as every other website I have tried has been an absolute piece of shit.

I'm trying to think of different ways to narrow down the problem since your search is screwed.
One test is go to Run, enter msconfig, under the general tab click on diagnostic setup, click ok, then ok. let it reboot, see if the 100% cpu usage still happens. Let us know the results.
Remember afterwards to do msconfig again and set it to normal and let it reboot.

Maybe you can get the driver info, then use another computer to get the stuff, put it on a USB stick , then copy it over to your old computer? Granted, this presumes your computer doesn't go nuts with USB-related stuff.

I did that and when it came back up I had very few running processes. I was not connected to my modem so I couldnt test any of the websites ive been trying, so I tried a few of my games that had experienced the slowdown. They again shot the cpu usage up to 100%, and were running really choppy even in diagnostic mode.

well, that sounds to me like a hardware problem then. like mortis suggested.